


House-Elves' Work

by Augustus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-07
Updated: 2004-12-07
Packaged: 2018-08-16 07:59:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8094322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augustus/pseuds/Augustus
Summary: Cooking is house-elves' work.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Gift fic for gala_apples for the hp_tradeoff community on LJ. Among other pairings, she requested Ron/Draco and also wanted food to be used in inappropriate ways—although not the usual 'sexy' foods, but rather something more obscure. She wanted a higher rating.

A mound of peeled potatoes teetered at the edge of the long workbench at the centre of the kitchen. They had been roughly stripped of their skin, a fact that was made evident by their angular shape and the presence of an unusually large number of remaining eyes. Beside the potatoes lay an equally large pile of peelings, bruised and curling a little underneath the weight of two discarded vegetable peelers. 

Ron scrubbed at a smudge of dirt on his cheek with the back of one hand, only succeeding in smearing it all the way to his hairline. His hair itself wasn't free of the signs of hard work, one corkscrew potato peeling hanging from a spot just below the crown of his head. He was sweating slightly, Draco noted disdainfully. The kitchens were a little stuffy, buried beneath the grander areas of the castle like they were, but that was hardly an excuse for sweating like a commoner. 

Of course, pureblood or not, you couldn't expect a Weasley to act like decent wizarding folk would act. Poverty was merely the most obvious sign of all manner of foul perversions, if Draco were to believe his father—and, naturally, he always did. The girl, Ginny, was simply annoying. Ron, however, seemed like the ultimate depiction of all things Weasley-esque, from the constant mess of his hair to the uncouth scattering of pale freckles over every visible stretch of his skin, right down to his unnatural dedication to the scourge of Hogwarts and Draco's existence, the unbearable Harry Potter. 

'See something green, Malfoy?' 

Draco blinked and looked away, realising that he had been staring at Ron throughout his internal diatribe. 'Just wondering how it's possible to get so filthy merely from peeling a few potatoes,' he said coolly, eyeing the end result of half an hour's work. 

'I could ask the same of you.' 

Draco struggled to keep his expression clear. 'Nice try, Weasleby.' 

Ron rolled his eyes. 'I have better things to do with my time than lying to the likes of you.' 

Feigning disinterest, Draco moved over to the oversized dresser at the far side of the room, peering at his reflection in the stained glass of its doors. To his dismay, a long stripe of dirt adorned his forehead, beginning just left of centre and continuing towards his right eyebrow in a jagged line. 'I look like bloody Potter,' he said, annoyed, rubbing roughly at his skin until only a faint shadow remained. 

'Harry'd be horrified.' 

'That makes two of us, then, doesn't it?' Sneering a little, Draco returned to the workbench, shoving a good proportion of the pile of peelings onto the floor in a mild show of temper. 

'I hope you intend to clean that up.' Ron didn't look up as he spoke, instead busying himself with slicing the peeled potatoes into quarters and loading them into large roasting pans. 

'Our punishment is food preparation, not cleaning. The house-elves can do it.' 

'You're going to tell McGonagall that, are you?' Shaking his head, Ron loaded the pans into the oven. 'I know we're not meant to cook them yet,' he explained when Draco gave him a questioning look. 'This way they're not taking up bench space while we do the rest of the stuff.' 

'You mean we have to do _more_?' Horrified, Draco snatched up the folded piece of parchment that lay on the bench, out of reach of the mess they had already created. 'You just said we had to peel potatoes.' 

'First thing on the list.' Ron walked back over to join him, brushing his hair back from his eyes and managing to leave a trail of olive oil through the front strands in doing so. 'There's heaps more after that.' 

Draco unfolded the parchment, gasping despite himself when he saw the length of the list. 'She has to be kidding.' 

'McGonagall's not so big on kidding,' Ron pointed out, 'especially when it comes to fighting in her Transfiguration class.' 

'Well, whose fault was that?' 

Ron just looked at him, eyebrows raised. 

'You started it,' Draco snapped when no further response was forthcoming. 

'If responding to your comment about Neville's abomination looking like my mother can be considered starting it, then fine,' Ron replied calmly. 'I started it, but you most certainly took part in it, so don't try to pretend you're a victim in all of this.' 

'I wasn't—,' Draco began, but trailed off when he noticed the unmoved expression in Ron's eyes. A pauper and a Muggle-lover, perhaps, but he was definitely a pureblood when it came to being absurdly stubborn about his opinions. Draco was always up for an argument, but only if he felt his victory was guaranteed. 'What's next, then?' he said instead. 'And don't you _dare_ say it's peeling _sweet_ potatoes.' 

'You're in luck. It's parsnips.' Ron retrieved the vegetable peelers from the remainder of the pile of peelings and tossed one at Draco. 'They're in the fridge, apparently.' 

Draco followed Ron's gaze to a large silvery appliance that was pushed against the same wall as the oven. 'That thing?' 

Ron blinked several times in quick succession, staring at Draco from beneath lowered brows. 'You're joking, right?' 

'Do I look like I'm joking?' Draco snapped, moving over to tentatively prod at the handle on the larger of the silvery thing's doors. 

A burst of sudden laughter filled the silence that had formed, echoing off the stone walls and reverberating throughout the room. Turning, Draco saw Ron bent almost double with mirth, one hand clutching desperately at the surface of the workbench to prevent himself from toppling over. 'You... funny... as useless as you look... spoilt rotten...' Draco managed to make out from between Ron's cackles. 

'I am _not_ spoilt rotten,' he snapped, more annoyed than he rightfully should have been. 'Just because _you're_ too poor to afford house-elves...' 

'Grow up, Malfoy,' Ron muttered tiredly, his laughter suddenly sliding into the corners of the room, which seemed, inexplicably, to shimmer for a moment before fading to their previous murky hues. 'If you're going to make fun of me, you could at least come up with something new to say.' 

'I wasn't trying to make fun of you,' Draco replied haughtily. 'I was merely stating a fact.' 

'Right.' Ron's disbelief was clearly evident upon his face, even to an amateur judge of human emotions. 'Well, I think you'll find that you need to actually pull that handle, not just fondle it, if you want to actually get anything out of the fridge.' 

Doing as he was told, Draco was surprised by the amount of pressure that was needed to open what had looked much like an oddly coloured cupboard. 

'Vacuum spell,' Ron said, as though reading Draco's mind. 'Keeps things fresh. And the cooling spell's cast so that it stays active for years. You just have to tweak it a little at times if things are starting to freeze.' 

'I didn't ask for a lecture,' Draco muttered, elbow deep in a large, clear container full of vegetables. 'How about you make yourself useful instead? Is there anything else we need while I'm in here?' 

'Just the parsnips,' Ron called after a short pause. 'Oh, and a couple of pumpkins too.' 

Draco located the extra vegetables, dumping them all out onto the floor beside him, uninterested in the basic rules of hygienic food preparation. 'Is that it?' 

'For now.' 

Muttering under his breath, Draco set about the task of transferring the food from the floor to the workbench. 'I still don't see why we're not allowed to use magic for this,' he grumbled. 'It's bad enough that we have to do common house-elves' work, without being forced to act like Muggles in the process.' 

'Who knows, Malfoy,' Ron said mildly, picking up a parsnip and beginning the slow process of peeling it. 'You might actually learn something.' 

'From working like a Muggle?' Draco's nose wrinkled with disdain. 'I think not.' 

'Humility, perhaps?' 

'That's hardly a useful lesson.' Draco picked up a parsnip of his own. 'I think I'd rather remain in the dark.' 

Rolling his eyes, Ron peeled in silence for a while before a mischievous smile began to form on his face. 'Awfully phallic, these things, aren't they?' 

Draco stared at him with pure, unadulterated horror in his eyes. 'Excuse me?' 

'Well, just look at them,' Ron said, waving one in Draco's face and ignoring the disgusted twitch of Draco's lips. 'Long and thin and...' He waggled it a little more energetically. '...And kind of floppy, too.' 

'Speak for yourself, Weasley.' Draco smirked and tossed another parsnip onto the growing pile of peeled vegetables. 'Although, I must say, you look like you're enjoying playing with that thing.' 

Ron had the decency to blush a little at that remark, dropping his parsnip onto the workbench as though it had suddenly grown teeth. Draco gathered it into the pile, then began to chop the vegetables into smaller pieces. 'Do these go into the pans too?' he asked. 

Ron nodded without speaking, quickly heading over to retrieve the baking dishes from the oven, as though glad to have an excuse to turn his back on Draco for a moment. By the time he dropped the pans onto the workbench, his cheeks had returned to their usual freckled pallor, but he still seemed unwilling to meet Draco's gaze unless it proved absolutely necessary. 

Draco began to load the parsnip into the pans as Ron glanced up at the clock on the wall. 'Damn, the meat should have been on five minutes ago,' he swore. 

'Well, if you weren't so busy fondling vegetables...' 

Ron ignored him, instead moving over to the fridge, where he retrieved two oversized legs of lamb. 'At least we only have to cook for the teachers' table,' he commented as he deftly trimmed the worst of the fat from the cuts of meat. 'Just imagine how much work it would be to cook for the entire school.' 

'Malfoys do not cook for Hufflepuffs.' Draco prodded one of the legs of lamb with a curious finger. 'Do we have to stuff it?' 

'Lamb?' Ron stared incredulously at him. 

'Is that what it is?' 

'Of course it's—' Ron stopped mid-sentence, taking a visibly deep breath before starting again. 'No, we don't need to stuff it, Draco,' he said evenly. 'You don't stuff legs of lamb.' 

'Well, that's one thing at least, I suppose.' Draco turned his attentions to the two whole pumpkins lying on the table. 'What about these? Do they go in the pans?' 

Ron slammed a large knife into the pumpkin closest to Draco. 'Once we've cut them up and removed the skin, they do.' 

'More peeling?' Draco grumbled, but set to work anyway. 

There was something quite soothing, he soon discovered, about cutting pumpkin. Potatoes and parsnips were too simple to slice into pieces; pumpkin required strength and a certain violence in order to cut through the tough outer layer. The first time he stabbed his knife into it, he imagined that it was Harry Potter's skull and the noise it made as it split was quite lovely. The second time, he pictured thrusting the blade into the hollow beneath one of Ron's shoulder blades, but the sound of his knife cutting through the pumpkin was too crisp to truly mimic the sound of steel slicing through muscles and flesh. He returned to his initial idea, and found that he was quite disappointed when there was nothing left to slice. As it was, his pieces were about a third of the size of Ron's. 

After arranging chunks of raw pumpkin in the pans, Ron carried them back over to the oven, this time actually casting the spell required to heat the food. Looking back up at the clock, he looked a little anxious for a moment before shaking his head slightly and heading across to the fridge. 

Dropping a bottle of cream and a bowl of unprepared strawberries onto the table, he said, 'That'll take a couple of minutes, probably. We can fix dessert while we're waiting.' Ron found another bowl in the dresser, and placed it in front of Draco, pushing the cream towards him. 

Draco stared blankly at him. 'What am I supposed to do with that? Pour it all over your naked body and lick it off?' 

Ron stared at him in blatant confusion for a moment, before a small smile began to twitch at the corners of his lips. 'Did you just make a joke, Malfoy?' he asked disbelievingly. 

'Well, it's not about to be a request, is it?' Taking a guess, Draco opened the bottle and poured the contents into the bowl. 'What now?' 

'You need to whip it.' 

'Kinky bastard,' Draco muttered under his breath. 

'With this.' Ron produced an egg whisk, which he had also discovered in the dresser, and handed it to Draco. 

Turning it over in his hands, Draco raised an eyebrow. 'I bet this'd raise a nice welt on a Muggle's back.' 

'Well, don't even _think_ about trying it out until you've finished with the cream,' Ron replied dryly. 'Not unless you want to learn how to wash dishes without magic as well.' 

Glaring at him—well, there wasn't anything wrong with lateral thinking, Draco thought, especially when it came to kitchen implements—Draco dipped the whisk into the cream, stirring it gingerly. 

'You'll have to do better than that if you want to do any good.' Ron moved over to stare through the oven window at the browning roast. 

Draco imagined running the whisk through the pulpy mess of Harry's exposed brain, whipping the cream faster and more viciously as he developed the image inside his head. A normal brain would probably put up a lot more resistance than a pint of cream, he realised, but Harry Potter's brain was decidedly _not_ normal, so there was no point in worrying himself with minor details like that. 

The thought was so entrancing that by the time Ron returned to the workbench with the cooked roast the cream was whipped into stiff white peaks. 'How's this?' Draco asked. 

Ron stared at it for a moment before answering. 'Bloody _brilliant_!' he exclaimed. 'I think you've found your forté, Malfoy. You're rubbish at peeling and chopping and knowing anything about meat, but you can do cream.' 

Draco beamed proudly for a moment, before suddenly remembering where he was, whom he was talking to and exactly what he was feeling proud about. The smile fell from his face, only to be quickly replaced by a well-practiced scowl. 'Are we done?' he asked, glancing across at the roast. 

'We should really remove the tops from the strawberries. But I reckon we'd get away with leaving them on if we said we did it that way on purpose. To make it easier to dip them in the cream an' all.' 

Draco shrugged. 'So we're done, then.' 

Ron checked the list one last time. 'I think so,' he replied, sounding quite amazed at the fact that they had managed to prepare an entire meal without killing each other. 

Draco had to admit that it was a rather amazing achievement. After all, they hadn't even managed to get through Transfiguration class without ending up rolling around in one of the aisles between desks with Ron's wand sticking uncomfortably into Draco's sternum as he tried to strangle Draco with one hand. Of course, if Draco wanted to be perfectly honest, he might well have been trying to get in a clean punch to Ron's head at the time—and he would have, too, if McGonagall hadn't broken the fight up so quickly. 

'Come on, then,' he said, grabbing the nearest pan. 'Let's get this food served up so we can get back to reality.' 

Draco started to move towards the door, the pan balanced precariously within his hands. His view of the floor was obstructed by the bulk of the leg of lamb, however, and he had only taken a couple of steps before he slipped on the potato peelings that still lay beside the workbench. He managed to stay on his feet for a few, pulse-speeding seconds, his legs doing an instinctive jig beneath the weight of the roast as he tried to keep his balance. In the end, though, the peelings proved too formidable an opponent and his heels slid further forward as he landed ungracefully on his arse, pouring most of the contents of the pan down his front as the impact of the jarring fall shot through his body. 

Taking a deep breath, he moved the pan to one side, shaking a few gelatinous droplets of meat fat from his arms. Ron's eyes were alarmingly bulbous as he stood looking down at Draco, his cheeks so red that his freckles were almost invisible and his jaw twitching spasmodically. 'Are you okay?' he asked, his voice tight. 

Draco looked down at the lamb leg that lay in his lap, surrounded by roast potato and parsnip, and at the smears of pumpkin that covered his robes and seemingly every inch of his skin. He didn't think he'd been in a more undignified position in his entire life, but he supposed that wasn't what he was being asked. 'I'll live,' he said stiffly, brushing a wedge of potato off his thigh. 

Ron stared at him in silence for a moment longer, as though determining whether he believed Draco's diagnosis, before finally succumbing to the laughter that had been building inside him. It sailed from his mouth in loud, echoing guffaws, shaking his body and causing tears to pour down his cheeks. His eyes creased almost to the point of disappearing as he leaned against the workbench for support, his chest heaving as he struggled to draw breath between cackles. Despite himself, after a few minutes of watching Ron laugh, Draco started to feel his own mouth curling upwards. That was soon followed by an uncontrollable shuddering in his limbs and torso and, finally, by an escaping snort of laughter that burst through his closed lips. Ron, encouraged by Draco's response, just laughed even louder, eventually sinking to the floor, mindless of the mess of spoilt food that lay over and around Draco, like the evidence of a bloody showdown. Their laughter mingled and soon it became impossible for Draco to distinguish one giggle from the other. Ron fisted a hand in Draco's ruined robes and fell backwards against the stone floor, pulling Draco with him so that even their hair became greasy with fat and congealed food. 

Finally their mirth began to fade a little, slowly dwindling to the occasional snort or chuckle. Neither made a move to rise, however, both content to catch their breath and clutch at stomachs that ached from too much convulsive laughter. 

Ron was the first to regain the power of speech, rolling onto his side and raising himself on one bent elbow. 'You have pumpkin in your hair,' he said, stretching out his spare hand to poke at Draco's fringe. 

'I have pumpkin all over me,' Draco pointed out, but reached up nonetheless to examine the indicated piece of hair. It was warm and slightly sticky to the touch. His fingers came away orange. He sniffed at the pumpkin for a moment before sticking out his tongue to tentatively taste the spoils of his first cooking experience. 'Hm, not bad.' 

Ron watched him, wide-eyed. 'Really?' 

'Really.' Draco licked the rest of the pumpkin from his fingers, then ran his tongue over his lips, searching for any last traces of it. 'If I had been born a Muggle—Merlin forbid—I would have made a wonderful cook.' 

'Really?' Ron said again, his gaze fixed firmly on Draco's mouth. 

'Mm-huh.' 

Ron paused for a moment, his teeth pulling at his bottom lip, then quickly reached out one index finger, running it down the streak of pumpkin that bisected Draco's cheek before sticking it into his own mouth, his eyes seeming to challenge Draco to say something about his action and to plead for him not to notice it, both at the same time. Stunned, Draco did neither, merely watching Ron in the hope of finding some clue to his sudden show of insanity. 

'You're right,' Ron said finally. 'It is good.' 

'A Weasley telling a Malfoy he's right?' Draco teased, brows raised. 'What is this, the end of the world?' 

'Be quiet or I'll take it back.' 

Draco's mouth closed, as though he no longer had any control over its movement. 

'You know,' Ron continued, leaning a little closer. 'I'd actually go so far as to say that pumpkin's _really_ good.' His eyes wide, he closed the remainder of the gap between them with one sharp movement, his tongue darting out to lick the rest of the pumpkin from Draco's cheek. 

Draco froze. 'What on earth are you doing?' he demanded, pushing against Ron's chest. 'It _isn't_ the end of the world, so stop acting like it is. Next thing you'll be talking about those damn parsnips again and wanting to stick one of them in me.' 

Above him, Ron's eyes darkened and his jaw twitched. 'Not a parsnip, no,' he muttered, bending to lick another line across Draco's cheek. 

'Stop it!' Draco managed to sound a little more forceful this time, another hard push to Ron's torso proving enough to send him back onto his side. 

Ron paused for a moment, seeming to consider his options, before the tense lines of his body faded into a self-conscious slump of limbs. 'Sorry,' he murmured, his head lowered. 'I don't know what came over me.' 

Draco stared at him, watching as Ron's head fell further forward and a little to the right. He had a smooth stripe of pumpkin running along the length of his neck. 'You have—' he began, then fell back into silence, his gaze not moving from the orange streak. 

'What?' Ron asked, looking up. 

'Pumpkin.' Draco pointed. 

Ron scrubbed at his neck with one hand, but somehow managed to miss the stripe entirely. 

'No, it's here.' Draco wiped at the streak, pausing as he became aware of the fast beating of Ron's pulse beneath his fingertips. 

'Oh.' 

Ron's expression looked familiar, Draco thought, as he rubbed away the worst of the pumpkin. He'd seen it before, aimed at him, even, and on more than one occasion. He wasn't aware he was staring until Ron shifted uneasily beneath his touch. 

'See something green?' Ron asked, his mouth curling into a small, sheepish smile at the repetition of his previous comment. 

'No, orange,' Draco replied, and suddenly he remembered. Fist fights in third year, slanging matches in fifth year, wrestling on the floor in Transfiguration class... Ron's jaw had been held in that manner when he had spat lies about Draco's mother; his eyes had glowed with a similar light when he'd pressed his wand to Draco's chest in sixth year and threatened to do the world a favour by doing away with him then and there. Passion, he realised with a jolt of recognition. Anger and fire and lust and the sort of heightened emotion that tingled within the tips of your fingers and flooded your entire body with blood and frustrated tension. He recognised it and, with two fingers pressed against Ron's neck, rising and falling slightly with the beating of Ron's heart, he understood. 

And perhaps Ron understood too, in a similar starburst of comprehension, because he took Draco's hand within his own, cleaning the smeared pumpkin from Draco's fingers with a surprisingly gentle lick of his tongue, then linking their fingers together in an orange-stained knot. When they kissed, Ron tasted of pumpkin and roast lamb, and his fingers tangled within Draco's hair, smudging potato over his temples and rubbing dark streaks of meat fat through the silver blond of his locks. It was okay, Draco told himself, because the Weasleys were paupers and Muggle lovers and had no concept of propriety, but they were pureblood nonetheless and that, after all, was what really mattered. That and the lazy flick of Ron's tongue against his collar bone as he clutched at the stones on the floor, roast parsnip deep beneath the perfect curves of his nails. 

Later, when Ron's fingers pressed deep within him, slick with olive oil and driving him to new, shuddering sensations that reawakened the laughter-hewn ache within his stomach, Draco bit down on his lower lip and felt a new burst of heat swell within him at the taste of mingled pumpkin and the metallic tang of blood. Ron stilled his resulting arch of need with a hand against Draco's chest, his fingers slipping in the weals of pumpkin upon his bare skin. Draco stretched to lick at Ron's fingers, his tongue dipping between them and circling around the tips, a strangely rhythmic motion of languid exploration. Ron moaned, his breath catching, and then he was inside Draco, pressing him into the slippery mess that had once been the kitchen floor and raising Draco's hand to his lips in a brief, breathless kiss. Draco rose to meet Ron's thrusts, scrabbling for purchase amongst the remains of the roast, then finally giving up and looping his arms around Ron's back instead, scratching lines of potato and parsnip into his shoulder blades as he curled his head backwards, his eyes closing as he let pleasure overwhelm his senses. 

And, in the end, if it had been Draco who had been first to entangle his fingers in Ron's when their final shudders had stilled, the gesture remained unspoken. Followed by a kiss from Ron, it might actually have been judged insignificant, or at least relatively so, had it not been for the way that Draco's stomach clenched with the realisation that he'd gone a lot further than merely laughing with the enemy this time. 

The contents of the second roasting pan grew cold on the workbench as they dressed in silence, and did what they could to clean up, given the limited resources that were available in the kitchen. Despite his best efforts, Draco's robes remained a little sticky to the touch, the fabric seeming to become a little stiffer with every minute that passed. 

When they ran out of cleaning spells and awkward silence, Draco and Ron returned to the mess at the workbench. 

'At least we still have one of the pans.' Ron poked the remaining leg of lamb. 'It's a bit cold, though.' 

Draco shrugged. 'What do they expect when they let two wizards loose in the kitchen and expect them to cook like common Muggles?' 

Ron opened his mouth as though to berate Draco for his comment, but closed it again after a second of silence. Draco smirked. Apparently the easiest way to shut someone up was to let them shag you senseless, he thought, amused. If he'd known that earlier, he might have... No, perhaps not. 

Lifting the roasting pan, Ron led the way towards the kitchen door. 'So, uh, this... thing?' 

'What thing?' 

'The us thing.' Ron was blushing again, not just his cheeks, but the top of his neck and the tips of his ears as well. 

'There's an "us thing"?' Draco raised one eyebrow, watching with mild interest as Ron squirmed uncomfortably beneath his gaze. 

'Right. Of course not.' Ron ran a hand through his hair, which still looked greasy, despite having been run under the kitchen taps for quite some time. 

Draco thought about his father's intense hatred for Arthur Weasley and about Ron's friendship with the deplorable Harry Potter. Then he thought about cold nights in the Slytherin dungeons and about the feel of roast pumpkin as it was smoothed across naked skin. Shivering slightly, he rubbed at a patch of potato that had clung to his robes despite his use of countless cleaning spells. 'Sometimes, after Quidditch practice, I like to fly down to the lake,' he said eventually. 'There's no one there at that time of the evening.' 

Ron frowned for a moment before a glow of realisation coloured his features. 'Oh,' he said stupidly. After another few seconds he added, 'Thursdays, right?' 

'And Mondays in the fortnight before a game.' 

As they reached the door, Ron smiled, his teeth white against the remnants of his blush. 'Do you think we should clean that mess up?' he asked, looking back towards the swirls and smudges of meat and three veg that coloured the kitchen floor. 

'Don't be foolish.' Draco's upper lip curled slightly in what could have been a sneer or a smile, depending on which you wanted it to be. 'That's house-elves' work.' 

'You never change, do you?' Ron remarked mildly, shaking his head as he opened the door. 

'Not if I can help it,' Draco replied, using his fingers to comb the final traces of pumpkin from his hair.


End file.
